Apprenticeships

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), and I shall try to keep the rhetoric to a minimum if I can. It is also a pleasure to speak in the debate. Apprenticeships are the most ancient form of vocational training. In this country, they predate degrees and their formal existence dates from the middle ages. In places such as China, apprenticeships have been around for 1,000 years. Hon. Members will all be aware that Confucius explained why apprenticeships worked by saying, ““I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand””. Last Friday evening, I had the good fortune to be invited to Selby abbey to present the annual Selby college awards. As the Minister will know, Selby college is an outstanding further education college in my constituency and I was thrilled to present awards to several apprentices who had excelled in their fields and who are now looking forward to embarking on their careers. The college plans rapidly to expand its apprenticeship scheme numbers in the forthcoming year, with ambitious plans to increase the programme by 300% by working closely with local and regional employers to help to train people with the skills they will need to join the working world. As well as making that commendable progress, the college is in touch with university partners to expand the range of degree programmes that students can take there. Today, thousands of young people are benefiting from the excellent start to their working life that an apprenticeship can offer, but apprenticeships are open not only to the young. Hon. and right hon. Members might have seen reports in the media about current apprentices in their 60s and 70s, and a recent forecast published by the Government shows a large increase in the number of adult apprenticeships over the course of this Parliament. That offers hope for all of us who might be thrown out of this place in the future. With Christmas spirit and a sense of fair play, I acknowledge that there is agreement on both sides of the House that apprenticeship training must be central to any Government's approach to skills. I will go further and acknowledge that one of the achievements of the previous Administration was to bring about a significant expansion of the number of apprentices in training. I am delighted, however, that the coalition Government have taken apprenticeships to a new level, as cemented in the coalition agreement, which stated that the Government"““will seek ways to support the creation of apprenticeships, internships, work pairings, and college and workplace training places as part of our wider programme to get Britain working.””" This Conservative-led Government have more than fulfilled that promise and continue to do so with an extra 53,000 apprenticeships starts recorded during 2010-11. We have seen a 54% increase in apprenticeship starts in 2010-11 compared with the figures for 2009-10, under the previous Government. Those figures could not be clearer. This has been a record year for apprenticeships, with the greatest proportional growth at level 3, the equivalent of A-level. The task now must surely be for the Government to continue to increase the number and range of apprenticeships on offer while, most importantly, improving their quality. I support the Government's announcements on improving the quality of apprenticeships, particularly now that English and maths up to the standard of a good GCSE—level 2—will be available for all apprentices. Madam Deputy Speaker, there is a great song—I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. I had not realised that you had taken Madam Deputy Speaker's place. There is a great song by an artist I have had the good fortune to have seen live, called Seasick Steve, which goes, ““I started out with nothing and still have most of it left””. If we are to avoid that rather gloomy outcome, we must continue to improve the quality of apprenticeships. In my constituency, Doosan Power Systems, a company that works in the energy sector, has had a successful apprenticeship programme in place for more than 40 years and employs 92 apprentices across the years between 16 and 18, with hopes of bringing in a further 62 next year. In Selby and Ainsty, we have seen an increase in apprenticeship numbers of 67% over the past year, from 510 to 850, and I hope that that figure continues to increase, with companies such as Doosan taking on more and more apprentices with the help and the support of the Government.